


Reader, She Married Him

by Pixie (magnetgirl)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/M, First Meetings, Lost Love, Love Stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-20 19:27:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14267946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/pseuds/Pixie
Summary: Jim thinks he's found the perfect person to finally help Bones get over his ex-wife. He's sort of right.





	Reader, She Married Him

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saturnofthemoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturnofthemoon/gifts).



> Many thanks to Helen8462 for letting me steal her idea and making sure it all hangs together.
> 
> This takes place vaguely around the events of _Star Trek Beyond_ , but it's not super important.

_"I have a strict policy against blind dates, Kirk."_

_"It's not a blind date, it's a friendly dinner. With friends."_

_It took all of Jim's -- to be fair, considerable -- charm to get them to the table. And that was before he found out,_

"You two know each other?"

Bones, always punctual, arrives first. And, always a gentleman, rises when Kirk enters with the woman he described as  _perfect for you_. When he realizes who she is his jaw drops open. Katrina, for her part, bursts into laughter.

"We were married," she finally explains to their bewildered and increasingly agitated mutual friend.

Kirk's eyes go wide. "You. . ." He turns to McCoy. "She's your. . .she's the one who--" Jim swallows the end of his sentence at the look of panic in the doctor's eyes. 

"The one who what?" Cornwell asks with a deceptively curious tone.

Kirk glances between them. "...Nothing."

It's incredible how easily a raised eyebrow can make a grown man squirm.

McCoy coughs. "Well, this is awkward."

Kirk nods with a frown, his mind scrambling to figure the best way to salvage the night, or at least extricate them all with the least amount of embarrassment. But Katrina touches his arm, soft, and smiling. 

"I think it's sweet."

Jim and Leonard stare at her with matching looks of confusion and disbelief. Her smile only grows and she takes a seat at the table, opposite McCoy's abandoned one. As if she plans to stay. After a beat, Kirk drops into the seat beside her. 

"We _would_ make a good couple," she explains. "We did once."

"We did?" Leonard squeaks, but at Kat's withering look he takes his seat with a mumbled, "Sorry."

Cornwell flags down a waiter and they all order a large, strong, drink -- though when they arrive they are all three shy to be the first one tipsy. Kat takes a slow sip of her whisky. McCoy plays with the garnish in his glass, suddenly afraid his stomach won't settle enough for him to drink it. Both are looking anywhere other than at each other. 

Jim's eyes flicker around the table. The admiral may have got them seated, but it is clearly on him to get them talking. He takes a big swig, clasps his hands on the table, and leans in. "Will you tell me?"

Katrina's eyes narrow. "Tell you what?"

"How you met, how you. . . "  _fell in love, fell out of love, how it started and how it ended up here, like this_. . . The words seem wrong so he rocks his head back and forth like a puppy. 

"It's a long story."

"I have time."

Katrina and Leonard share a look. She shrugs. He sighs. 

"We met at a conference," he starts. "I was a resident, barely out of school and I definitely didn't want to go listen to a bunch of space cadets lecture."

"Always so open-minded," Kat murmurs, and for the first time Kirk hears a bite in her tone.

"I am incredibly open-minded," McCoy argues. "It's you lot who think Starfleet is the be all and end all of everything." His affront includes the captain as well as the admiral and Kirk doesn't think it's particularly fair. Nor particularly effective as all three of them are dressed in Starfleet uniforms, a point Cornwell makes with the slightest nod of her head at his badge.  _Damn the woman._ "She was already a commander," he continues, "but I didn't know that when we met."

 

_She was by far the most attractive person in the bar. And he wasn't alone in the assessment, he watched four others strike out before he worked up the courage to approach her. Well, no, the Andorian she knew and he was pretty sure they made plans. And the excitable blonde seemed satisfied just sharing a drink. It was the clumsy pharmaceutical pitch and the pushy Fleet captain she blew off and to be honest, that just made her more attractive._

_"Hello, darlin, what are we drinking?"_

_Her expression of sharp, and reasonable, annoyance morphed into amusement when she caught the twinkle in his eyes, the froufrou drink in his hand, and his overall boyish charm -- all of which he knew exactly how to deploy, which is how he knew he could get away with a little casual sexism. He wasn't a player (he'd be a terrible player), but he could play._

_"Well I'm drinking whiskey straight. I'm not sure you can handle it." Or me, her eyes teased._

_"Hey now, you don't even know me."_

_She cocked her head. "I'm trying to decide if I want to." Leonard mimed a wound to the heart, causing Katrina to laugh. It was a beautiful laugh._

_"At least let me prove my liquor mettle."_

_She laughed again. "What, a challenge?"_

_"Sure."_

_She shook her head. "I have the advantage. You're half my age."_

_"You're half my weight but I'm not holding it against you," he countered. The twinkle was back and her body was tingling in response._

_She held out a hand he readily clasped. "Katrina."_

_"Leonard."_

_"I'm presenting in the morning," she explained. "So I can't get drunk tonight." She touched a finger to his lips to stave off the protest in his eyes. "But we can get to know each other."_

_He grinned and nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak, and let her pull him away from the bar._

 

"We ended up in my hotel room." Kat smiles. As she recalls, they'd barely made it out the lift before they started pulling each other's clothes off. "In the morning I woke up alone, thought that was that." Kirk frowns, it doesn't sound like the McCoy he knows. "But then he shows up to my seminar with coffee and a peach muffin."

"Georgia specialty," McCoy murmurs, meeting the admiral's eyes, and a decade later, the memory makes them both blush. Jim smiles. That does.

 

_"You're Starfleet," he said, stating the obvious as she was in uniform now, and was addressed as Commander throughout the morning._

_"You say that like it's an accusation." He shrugged. "_ _What's wrong with Starfleet?"_

_He shrugged again. "I'm a doctor, not a soldier."_

_"Soldiers are in the minority, most of us are explorers."_

_"Okay." She cocked her head. He sighed. "Space is dangerous. And far away."_

_"You've never been off-planet?"_

_He frowned. "You say that like it's an accusation."_

_"No," she assured him. "Just different." Now she shrugged. "I grew up with Starfleet. We travelled a lot."_

_Leonard nodded, as if he understood better than he did. It sounded rootless to him. But maybe roots aren't important to people who live among the stars. She must've sensed some of what he was thinking, though._

_"Show me your hospital," she urged. Show me your roots._

 

"After the tour, I went home with him. It was a tiny apartment, barely three rooms." She laughs. It's still a beautiful laugh. "And he had this table that took up half the living space. Heavy wood, hand-carved. Six chairs."

Leonard smiles. He hadn't thought about that table in years. Too many memories. "I like dinner parties."

Kat glances at him, quiet. He'd given her a different reason back then.

 

_He brushed gentle fingers across the wood. "Someday I'll have a family." Their eyes met in the bright sunlight of a Georgia twilight._

 

"We didn't make any plans but we kept in touch and my next leave, I came to visit. And then the next and…" She takes a sip of her drink. "It started to be a pattern."

"Hey, I came to San Francisco, too," McCoy adds.

Kat scrunches her nose. "Maybe once or twice."

"At least twice." She laughs again, and a moment later the two men join in. Leonard holds up a hand in surrender. "It's just such a government town."

"I grew up in San Francisco," Katrina protests.

"Exactly."

She rolls her eyes. "Anyway, after a while, getting married just seemed the obvious course of action."

Kirk straightens. "That's it? No elaborate proposal?" It sounds like a business arrangement or something Spock would do. "I'm disappointed, Bones, you're always such a romantic."

"Yeah, well." He fidgets, embarrassed, and Kat jumps in to save his reputation.

"He knew any big romantic gestures would scare me away." 

A wistful quiet falls over the three as they each process this simple truth. McCoy watches the other two look away and smiles to himself.

"So I guess the wedding was simple," Jim posits.

Katrina nods, still wistful. Leonard leans forward with a grin.

"We were married in a barn."

"Really?"

"No," Kat answers definitively. 

"Yes," Bones echoes. "With pigs."

Jim starts to guffaw. Kat's cheeks flush with ire. 

"There were no pigs!"

McCoy shrugs. "Well…"

She glares. "If you say Gabriel I will hit you."

" _I_ didn't say it," he remarks with a patently false innocence. Katrina harrumphs in exasperation and turns to Kirk, trying, and mostly failing, to swallow his laughter.

"Yes, the wedding was small," she says through her teeth. "Just a handful of friends." He'd wanted to marry, not her. She wasn't opposed, it just wasn't important to her. And that's all anyone needed to understand to rest of the story. Maybe she knew then. Maybe she shut off right when she should have opened completely. Because she didn't really know how.

"Was it different? Being married?"

She wonders why he's asking, why he cares to hear this whole sordid affair. A glance to Leonard tells her he wonders, too. But maybe it doesn't matter why. Maybe why isn't the point. 

"Not at first," Leonard answers, serious again.They expected nothing to change, but of course everything did. "But then she got a promotion that came with a position planetside."

"Vetting research for Starfleet Medical," she adds. It was a detail important to her.

"So we got a house." Another mistake, it quickly became an illustration of how mismatched they were. He wanted to move forward, she was comfortable the way things were. He wanted roots, she didn't need them.

 

_"I spent more time with you when you were half a galaxy away."_

_"That's not fair."_

_"No,_ this _is not fair!" He gestured to the table, his family dinner table, two places set side by side in a corner. It was clearly a romantic dinner and it was clearly wilted. Food cold, wine warm, candles melted. She was expected hours ago, and hadn't called to say she'd be late until she was on her way. "We live together and I never see you."_

 _She sighed. He'd put in a lot of effort and she felt terrible. But she never asked him to do this. In fact, she told him not to._ _"My work is important."_

_"So is mine, but I'm home for dinner."_

_She looked away with another sigh._

_"Right." He read her posture -- his work is not important. "You know, Starfleet is not inherently better than everyone else."_

_She turned back with flashing eyes. "I never said-"_

_"You don't have to say anything." His expression is a storm. "You live it."_

_She crossed her arms over her chest, closed herself up like a fan. "You knew who I am when we met."_

_"Yeah and I thought. . ." He shook his head and kicked the chair in frustration._

_"What? That I would leave?" She gestured wildly around the dining room, the house and all its suffocating extra space. "Settle down and be a good country doctor like you?"_

_"What is so wrong with that?" he roared. She blinked, tears threatening._

_"Leonard, you're brilliant. You could do so much more than this." She reached a hand towards him, brushed her fingers to his cheek. "Haven't you ever wanted to be part of something bigger, something special?"_

_He closed his hand over hers and drew it slowly to his heart. "I am a part of something special. I wish you could see that."_

_Her breath caught in her throat and silence grew between them._

_"Thousands of people depend on me," she said, finally, tears running down her cheek. Not an excuse, not even a reason. Just her truth._

_He nodded, smiling with sad eyes. "And I'm just one." He pulled her into his arms. "I thought one day, if I was patient. . .one day you'd choose me." He kissed the top of her head to soothe muffled sobs. "But that's not who you are."_

_"I love you," she whispered._

_"I know," he assured her, and pulled her tighter to him. "I love you."_

_In the end their marriage was just another five year mission. When it fell apart she threw herself into her work and he ran away. The planet was too small for both of them, he couldn't breathe. So he took the only choice left that would hurt her as much as him and joined Starfleet._

 

They've reached the end of their story and go quiet. Jim's wide eyes flicker between them.

"Wow."

"I know," Leonard agrees.

"Wow."

"You said that."

"Wow."

Kat laughs. Leonard glances at her, a smile tugging at his lips. He's missed the sound of her.

Jim grins, and stands. "We need another drink." They nod, and he heads off to order another round.

"Kid has a crush on you, you know," McCoy drawls, a familiar twinkle in his eye.

"I know."

He leans back in his chair. "I think you should go for it."

"Leonard!" she hisses.

"What?"

She rolls her eyes. "I served with his _parents_."

"Huh." He raises his eyes to hers. "I forgot you were on the _Kelvin_." It was years before they met and not something she brought up often. "Does he know?" She shakes her head, slow. "He should."

She pulls her lips in over her teeth. Leonard reaches across the table to thread his fingers through hers.

"You know, this date ended up a lot more fun than I expected."

She shoots him a disbelieving, and disapproving, look.

"I'm being serious." He pauses to meet her look with clear eyes. "It's good to see you."

She smiles. "It's good to see you, too."

He glances over to Kirk, on his way back with a tray of drinks. "His birthday's coming up. I'm having a party and I want you to come."

"I don't know-"

"Not with me," he interrupts to reassure. They don't work. And that's okay. "It'll be the perfect opportunity to tell your story." She looks over to the young captain. "Or seduce him. Your choice."

Kat shakes her head, chuckling, and turns back with curious eyes. "Why does he call you 'Bones'?"

"Oh... uh," he stammers, flustered.

"Sawbones." Kat and Bones turn to Jim's smiling face. "What they called doctors back in the day," he explains.

Kat glances between the two. She knows there is something they're not telling her, but she thinks that's as it should be. "I like it," she tells them, and leans over to take her glass. 


End file.
